Former Israeli Military Intel Personnel Launch New Crypto Firm Blockaid with $33 Million in Funding – What Does it Do?

Web3 security company Blockaid said it has emerged from stealth with $33 million in funding to protect users from fraud, phishing, and hacks. 

The company, founded in September 2022, concluded its series A funding round, bringing the total raised to $33 million, led by Ribbit Capital and Variant, with participation from Cyberstarts, Sequoia Capital, and Greylock Partners,” it said.

Blockaid plans to use the funds to fuel the company’s growth and scale the product, customer base, and team.

Per the press release,

“In under a year, Blockaid has not only secured a recent funding boost but has also come out of stealth, revealing some of its inaugural customers: Metamask, Opensea, Rainbow, and Zerion — with more to be announced soon.”

Their common goal is to protect millions of users from malicious transactions before they occur.

Blockaid enables users to trust using wallets, decentralized applications (dapps), and smart contracts by preemptively validating all transactions, it said.

Compatible With Every Blockchain

The team notes that internet cybercrime accounts for billions of dollars in losses annually, with $7 billion reported last year alone. 

“The emerging world of web3, although smaller in number of users, saw over $14B in losses in that same period — representing 2x the impact of scams and hacks.” 

Therefore, for Web3 future to have a future, security as a fundamental issue must be addressed.

Blockaid says it provides a layer of security to any blockchain application – being compatible with all blockchains – by scanning every transaction originating from a wallet, engaging with a dapp, or reaching a smart contract. 

It also claims to be the only security solution able to fully simulate off-chain signatures (EIP-712s) as effectively as on-chain transactions.

Much of the data on a blockchain is private, so the security solution capable of seeing the most transactions and having the most data will have better signals for its model.

According to the company, 

“In the last 3 months alone, we’ve scanned 450M transactions, thwarted 1.2M malicious transactions, and safeguarded $500M in user funds that would have been otherwise compromised.”

For example, it said it thwarted a phishing attack via Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s compromised Twitter account and protected all wallets that had enabled Blockaid’s service.

Operating out of offices in New York and Tel Aviv, Blockaid is co-founded by two former Israeli military cyber intelligence personnel, Ido Ben-Natan (CEO) and Raz Niv (CTO). 

After over six years of leading R&D teams, the two left the military to start the project that would become Blockaid, the website says.

The company’s team of security experts currently includes over 20 former Israeli Unit 8200 cyber intelligence personnel. 

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